Food and values - the organic future

Food has certainly been in the news over the last couple of months. Stories have ranged from the link between highly processed food and behaviour, to the demise of Little Chef.

The Daily Mail discovered, to everyone's surprise, that the offspring of a cloned cow had arrived in the UK. Today, I heard scientists from the University of Hull describing research which says healthier, better quality school meals have increased school attendance, and uptake of school dinners, and improved behaviour and academic performance.

The Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, got himself into trouble for describing organic food as merely a 'lifestyle choice'. What he actually said was that it's better for wildlife but 'there isn't any conclusive evidence either way' on whether organic food is better for your health.

Miliband subsequently added that not only is the scientific evidence that organic food is better for wildlife, but also, 'in many cases, but not all cases [it] produces fewer greenhouse gases'.

I want to come back to that later. The best comment I saw on that particular storm in a media teacup came from the person interviewed by the BBC who said, 'I take my vegetables seriously and my politicians with a pinch of salt.'

So, the Food Standard Agency seems to have picked the right issue for this year's City Food Lecture. I'm very grateful to them and the City Livery Companies for inviting me to give it. In the past there has been some conflict between those of us producing and selling organic food and the FSA, but I certainly welcome this opportunity for discussion.

The FSA should be independent of everyone involved in food and, on the whole, I think they now are.

All of us involved in organic farming and food are united in our interest in wholesome food and our support for healthy eating. We share the FSA's concern about children's diets, school meals, and we strongly support their campaign for greater openness, so consumers have full and accurate information about their food. This is also, incidentally, a founding objective of the Soil Association.

Sixty years ago our founder, Lady Eve Balfour, said that our job should be 'to collect and distribute knowledge so as to create a body of informed public opinion'. Of course, we don't claim to have all the answers. Organic is not perfect. We sometimes fall short of our own principles. There's much still to do to improve the environmental, animal welfare and nutritional advantages of organic food, and to stop our standards being eroded.

The case I want to put to you this evening is very simple. I believe we're at the beginning of major changes in our food culture which will, in turn, lead to profound changes in British farming.

There are some strong stereotypes of the British peoples' attitude to food and to British farming and farmers. British school meals are not the only part of our cuisine that have had the reputation of being almost inedible. Hospital food and motorway services come to mind. In a report five years ago the Soil Association called some school food 'muck off a truck'.

That was controversial until Jamie Oliver came along and attacked scrotum burgers a couple of years later. So, Scotland may be known for deep fried Mars Bars, but deep fried fast food found a ready home throughout the United Kingdom. On top of this apparent lack of interest in food quality came the malign influence of an unthinking worship of technology.

Half a century ago, when I was a child, the prevailing view in society, and certainly in farming, was that science and technology could conquer nature. I vividly remember Raymond Baxter on Tomorrow's World showing me and millions of others the three pills that, he said, were already capable of providing all the nutrition a human being could need for perfect health. I remember when we saw the food that astronauts were eating, the first astronauts, dried powder in foil packets; many believed that by now all of us would be eating like that.

Modern farming was increasingly hi-tech, dependent on sprays, treating many farm animals as if they were machines, dominating nature, sweeping away wetlands, hedges, woods, farmland birds and wild flower meadows. Politically, Harold Wilson, whose government I was a member of, saw our future, the country's future, in the 'white heat of technology'.

With both British food and farming the reality is now changing fast. As with most significant shifts in public behaviour, the immediately identified causes, for example, Jamie Oliver's brilliant TV series on school meals, actually rely on a much more fundamental shift in public values.

Researchers have identified long standing concerns about industrial farming and industrial food production. In particular, when researching emerging public opposition to GM food in the 1990s, they found deep underlying unease about modern farming and food processing. People are suspicious because they feel that much of what is done in producing our food, their food, is done in secret: from the dark interior of the battery house, through hidden or mysterious additives to misleading packaging. People aren't stupid.

Fundamental changes in farming are difficult for a number of reasons. But if I look at my own farm, there have been huge changes over the last 80 years (not that long - about the time it would take a beech or an oak planted on the farm, to reach maturity). Some of those changes were short-lived. In the 1930s the tenant farmers who'd farmed the farm for three generations went bust in the depression.

Mr Wharton had to sell everything and the sale catalogues and his meticulous notes make sad reading. They're a reminder of just how diverse farming was before the war. He sold working horses, foals, cows and calves (kept for both milk and meat), sheep, pigs, chickens and ducks.

The farm, more or less, went out of use until the war, then, of course under government direction, it came back into full production, including some land that may never have been ploughed before. After the war, when my father bought the farm, new pesticides, heavy use of artificial nitrogen fertiliser, new crop varieties, and bigger and better machinery transformed British farming. Nitrogen was no longer needed in such quantities for armaments and was plentiful - supplied by companies like ICI, started by Alfred Mond, my great grandfather.

One man who worked on the farm saw, as a boy, the first spray being applied by a horse-drawn sprayer just before the Second World War. In the 1990s, when retired but still working part time, he saw what I believe will be the last sprays every applied to our farm, as we converted to organic. When people look back on that period, I'm convinced that the era of industrial and intensive farming will be seen as a brief blip, a wrong turn from which we, hopefully, recovered fairly quickly.

There wasn't much that farmers could do about the Great Depression and, of course, there was, rightly, huge public as well as political support for maximising food during the 1940s and 50s. But farming became increasingly out of tune with public values from the 1960s onwards. The farming and pesticide industries, aided by the Government, fought a long a bitter rear guard action to defend pesticides attacked by Rachel Carson, like DDT, which was eventually banned in Britain.

The same bitter rear guard battles were fought to defend straw burning, now banned, the removal of hedgerows, also largely banned now, the widespread destruction of SSSIs, special wildlife sites, only halted by legislation in the early 1980s.

My father was involved in a scheme to drain 150 acres of fresh water grazing marshes belonging to a neighbour which we subsequently farmed for many years. The drainage was paid for by the taxpayer at huge expense. The subsequent wheat crops were bought by the taxpayer, stored at their expense, and eventually sold cheaply - dumped - on the world market. Now, just a few decades later, many such areas are being returned to their previous state, again at the taxpayers' expense.

So, over the last decade there's been a huge shift in UK public policy on food and farming. The post-war policy of cheap and plentiful food has landed us with a cheap and unhealthy diet, and a crisis of obesity and ill health.

Real changes are taking place in our food culture, and these are increasingly reflected in the marketplace. As David Cameron has recognised, economic stability has, for the first time since the Second World War, pushed concern about the quality of life ahead of concern about economic prosperity. While people still largely buy on price, they actually value the quality and taste of food above price.

The environment is growing in importance when it comes to buying food, particularly amongst organic consumers. In October last year Sainsbury's Chief Executive, Justin King, said they were being driven by consumers demanding better quality food. He said, 'There's an increasing trend to fresh and healthy food, we're in the middle of sea-change in customers' attitude towards quality.' The same month, Asda announced they would be stocking 1,000 organic lines. Sainsbury's says organic food is clearly entering the mainstream - 15% of the milk it sells is organic.

The Soil Association has just published a report,Food and Values, which discusses recent research into the British public's attitudes to food and farming; copies are available on your way out if you're interested in the detail. The British countryside is a vital part of our culture. Farmers are popular, and there is strong support for good quality food supplied locally from farming systems that enhance the beauty and variety of the countryside, and that benefit farmland wildlife. Organic food and all it represents is increasingly popular. Some people are not comfortable about shopping in supermarkets. Five out of 10 organic consumers say they prefer to buy food from smaller local greengrocers, farmers' markets and box schemes. The rise in retail sales of organic have hit the headlines, but the growth in local and direct sales of organic food are more dramatic and may be more significant in the long run.

In catering the revolution has only just begun but the huge changes in school meals are being rapidly followed by changes in commercial catering. NGOs like the National Trust and the Youth Hostel Association are doing their bit. Innovative companies from Ikea to Center Parcs or new entrants like the fast food chain, Leon, are leading the way. But good practice can be found all the way from the Eden project in Cornwall via the Natural History Museum to our most popular tourist attraction, the Tower of London. And, the FSA is responding to this value shift by committing to integrate sustainability advice with the nutritional advice it gives to the public, and I welcome this.

So, why is it, as we face another huge change in our farming and food industries, that the very word 'organic' stirs such passion, and it has to be said, hatred sometimes amongst some of those involved? I think it's because those that understand organic farming and food processing know it will mean huge real changes. Phrases like 'sustainable agriculture' and 'wildlife friendly farming' do not send the same signals. I believe we're entering a new phase in how we farm and the sort of food we eat, but it's true that this change is not simply informed by science, and it's also true that it's not anti-science. Opposition to pesticides, routine use of antibiotics, or to GM, is not opposition to science. From the public's point of view it reflects their collective intelligence based on experience, as well as feelings about what's right and wrong in food and farming.

It's also wrong to assume that people are simply being manipulated by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or the media. My own experience is that NGOs, if they're doing a good job, tend to reflect public opinion. If they're doing a really good job, they reflect where public opinion is going. I think this new phase in our food culture will be informed first by public experience, particularly of the mistakes we've made over the last half century. Those mistakes include sudden and unexpected outbreaks of disease, like mad cow disease, as well as the slow discovery of long term but dramatic changes like the decline in farmland birds and other wildlife, or the decline in the vitamin and nutrient content of our food. Second, this new phase will be informed by the changes in public values I've already discussed. Third, it will be informed by science and particularly by the need to respond to the science of climate change.

So, what form might this new phase take? A number of strategies are being put forward. One suggestion is that we should enthusiastically adopt new technology, increase farm size to cut costs, add artificial nutrients to food, and compete in the world market with commodity crops and processed convenience food. That model certainly doesn't fit with the shift in public values towards fresh and wholesome food, nor does it tackle climate change. Another popular option is for us to start farming for fuel. The scientific case for this is weak.

For example, compared to petrol, wheat bio-ethanol produces estimated greenhouse gas reductions of 15-40% per kilometre. Imported sugar cane delivers reductions of up to 90% per kilometre. One of the appeals of bio fuels is their assumed potential to reduce national dependence on imported fossil fuels, but the OECD estimates that the EU would have to use an impossible 72% of its arable land to supply just 10% of its fuel use.

A more realistic, but still considerable, use of 18% of EU arable land would achieve a 1-2% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from transport. Far less, I'm sure, than converting the same area to growing organic food. So, this alternative vision of the future of agriculture, a huge expansion in energy crops would sacrifice food security for an illusion of energy security.

My father chaired the British Steel Corporation in the 1960s and in line with the prevailing orthodoxy, he believed that Britain could compete on the world market, at that time, against the Japanese by adopting the latest technology and building bigger steel plants. We now know that that proved wrong in the longer term.

Newer, ever more efficient plants in lower labour cost countries like South Korea, India and China proved more competitive still. British food and farming won't survive in the world market by adopting hi-tech solutions. But farming has one huge advantage - unlike steel, call centres or Hoover factories, our land can't be moved to India. If we reconnect people with our farms, produce local food, particularly from locally distinct breeds and varieties, we have a future that cannot be exported. This is in line with public values. The policy imperative of reducing climate change impacts will also reinforce that strategy - as long as we farm in climate friendly ways. If we move towards fresh, wholesome food and tackle climate change, then it's clear what direction food and farming must take. The future of UK food is seasonal, fresh and local, produced by organic farms to minimise greenhouse gas emissions.

And so, a word about organics. For many years opponents of organic have said that 'there's no evidence' it's any better. Now the evidence is available and, as yet more emerges, suddenly they start to say, 'please can we not talk about the differences, we're all in this together, chaps'. I make no apology for talking about the evidence. So, how is organic doing? It's small, but it is trends that show change - not the absolute numbers - the direction we're going in.

First the market. Last July, a report from Mintel showed that consumers are increasingly using natural and healthy ingredients, and that the market in ready meals has slowed with the rise in people who prepare dishes from scratch. Organic farming accounts for about 4% of UK farmland. In 2005, the market for organic food was worth
1.6 billion, and it grew at 30%, compared to the annual growth rate for all food in the UK food and drink of around 3%.

That was around
7 million worth of organic sales per week extra, with UK farmers supplying about 45% and the rest supplied by imports. The current huge growth in demand, and the time taken for farmers to convert (about three years for product to get to market) may suck in more imports for a while, but a third of farmers have said they would consider converting to organic, and 38% of farmers consider organic farming as 'the future'. Nearly 70% of organic food sold in supermarkets that can be grown in the UK is sourced here, compared to a mere 30% in 2002, just five years ago.

Sales of organic produce through box schemes and mail order grew by 22% in 2006. Sales through farm shops and direct sales, local outlets, grew even more rapidly, as I said, by 32%. There are now 550 farmers' markets in the UK. The first was set up in 1997. In my own part of the world, a new organic box scheme, Nene Valley, sold the first of their vegetable boxes in February 2005. One year later they were selling 4,500 boxes a week, and another year later, today, they are selling 9,000 boxes a week.

And of course this is no longer simply a middle class market. Over 50% of people on lower income groups are buying organic food, and if they buy direct from farmers, or via box schemes, it needn't be more expensive than non-organic food in supermarkets. Information is limited, but some studies have shown that if shoppers shift away from ready meals and diets high in meat, and buy more healthy, fresh, seasonal produce, and less but better quality meat, the additional costs of organic are offset.

Three quarters of parents in the UK buy organic baby food. It makes up about half of the total sold. Organic baby food is available free to parents who eat in Ikea restaurants, and they're also supplying an organic lunchbox for kids. Parents and school governors at many schools have opted for at least part of their school dinners being sourced from organic farms. More recently, this growth seems to have accelerated. Organic food was one of the star performers in a record Christmas for Tesco, and Tesco's organic sales grew by 39% in 2006. Organic turkey sales doubled. Tesco said last week that the huge growth in organic sales is testimony to the fact that people will make greener choices if they get the right information, opportunity and incentive, and as has already been mentioned, Marks & Spencer have launched their new Plan A, and that includes tripling their sales of organic food, and launching organic cotton, linen and wool.

We're not alone in the UK. In the US, organic food sales reached nearly $14 billion in 2005 - annual growth about 20%. More than 70% of Americans buy organic food at least occasionally. In the UK it's around 75%, as I said.

That's the market, now for the benefits. The additional sustainability and wildlife benefits of organic farming were estimated by DEFRA to be worth
130 per hectare in 1999. Even on health there are some limited things on which the Soil Association and the government, or in this case, the Food Standards Agency, do agree. The FSA says that 'eating organic food can help to minimise consumption of pesticide residues and additives'. Recent research at Liverpool University shows that organic milk can contain higher levels of short-chain omega-3 fatty acids and ALA than conventionally produced milk. Trans fats found in foods containing hydrogenated vegetable oil are harmful. No hydrogenated fats are allowed in organic food. Beef produced from animals fed a diet high in forage, rather than grain, has reduced saturated fatty acid concentrations, and enhanced contents of omega-3 fatty acids, and organic standards require that cattle be fed predominantly on forage-based diets.

So consumers are right, on health grounds, to buy organic food to reduce their intake of saturated fats, or to avoid hydrogenated fats. Of course the FSA say that non-organic food is as safe as organic, but science can't prove there's no risk from pesticides, for example. So an organic shopper, who, in the absence of definitive scientific evidence either way, reasonably believes that the accepted nutritional differences, or absence of pesticides and artificial additives in organic food, will benefit them or their children is making a rational health-based choice.

I would go further. Supported by the research that's been done, I believe there are generally more beneficial nutrients in organic food and less harmful pesticides, additives and nitrates. Organic food is clearly better for you. And it's self-evident that a farming system that's better for our environment is better for our overall health and improves our prospects of survival.

This is clear when we come to consider climate change. Climate change has at last come to dominate public policy considerations and the thinking of many companies, and it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I have already mentioned M&S and Sainsbury's views. In a potentially very significant move, which I warmly welcome, Tesco will be labelling all their products with their climate change impact. We must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the farming and food industries by 60 to 80% by 2050. We have to adapt to a world with declining oil and gas supplies. We have to help mitigate the effects of climate change, for example by reducing flooding and reducing demand for fresh water. We have to adapt to a world of more extreme and unpredictable weather.

Food and farming produce a whopping 18% at least of the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions. As I've said, that's going to have to be cut by 6% to 80%. Farming, growing and rearing animals, contributes nearly 9% of the UK's emissions. After the farm gate, transport, food manufacturing and retailing, catering and home preparation contribute another 9%. It's clear that what in the past was seen as adding value to the food chain will all too often in future be seen simply as adding carbon. In farming, half the greenhouse gas emissions are nitrous oxide, 310 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Over a third are methane, 23 times more powerful than CO2. Producing one tonne of nitrogen releases the equivalent of 6.7 tonnes of CO2. Nitrogen fertiliser is made from fossil fuel, currently the increasingly scarce natural gas. UK farming uses 3 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser annually, half of which is imported. In future, we will need to be as conscious of 'fertiliser miles' as we already are of 'food miles'.

What do we know about the climate change impact of organic farming compared to non-organic? We don't know enough, more work is needed. But as David Miliband said recently, taking into account lower yields, government research suggests that organic farming 'in many, but not all cases, produces fewer greenhouse gases'. Organic farming is based on solar-powered, renewable processes, on the farm, in particular using clover to fix nitrogen. Organic cropping involves less ploughing, and organic systems can also build soil carbon levels by up to a tonne per hectare per year. They reduce flooding risk and agricultural water use, and reduce vulnerability to drought. Organic farming has a lot more to do. We have similar inputs into the farm as non-organic, in terms of machinery fuel, electricity and so on.

Some lower yields of organic crops give more greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of production. Longer lived, slower maturing animals may consume more energy per tonne of output - this depends crucially on diet - and methane, particularly from burping animals, is a real problem. The science is still lacking.

Beyond the farm gate, the bulk of organic sales go through supermarkets and suffer from many of the problems of concentration of production and processing, and long distance distribution as non-organic. Even with all those uncertainties, in a world of increasing scarcity of fossil fuels, I am clear that organic farming provides the only environmentally or economically sustainable system of feeding the world. Globally organic farming won't require more land to be brought into cultivation. Recent research by Danish and American scientists suggest that if all farming were organic, the slight decrease in yields in the northern hemisphere would be more than matched by overall increases elsewhere, leading to a marginal increase in total food production. Long-term trials - over 25 to 30 years now - in the United States show organic yields matching those of non-organic systems, with organic farming outperforming non-organic in drought years. And of course rising energy prices will help reinforce what the farming and food industries need to do to tackle climate change. Economic pressures will favour organic, local, seasonal, and unprocessed food. If climate change has one, positive lesson for us, it is that we can't conquer nature. We are part of, not superior to, or in charge of, the natural world.

Organic farming and food doesn't have all the answers, but solar-powered, animal and wildlife friendly, pesticide and additive free farming and food is where we're heading. This is in line with underlying public values, and in response to strong policy drivers. Referring to Tesco's decision to fix a carbon label on all their products, on its shelves, last Sunday's Observer said, in an editorial, that 'the future is the low carbon emission politician'. The future is also low carbon food and farming, and luckily this change will be supported by public values, and is in line with trends in the market. Of course there are huge entrenched interests that are threatened by the changes I've described, but we now, I believe, have a new vision for British food ' seasonal, unprocessed, local and organic ' tasty, healthy, and environmentally sustainable. This in turn should drive how we farm. We'll enjoy better food, better health, a better environment, more jobs in rural areas, and a more beautiful countryside. We're seeing the start of a revolution in our food culture, and farming practice. We don't need to wait for governments or companies, to make these changes. All of us decide what we eat, so all of us can make a difference. Thank you.